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Grants Pass & Josephine County Chamber of Commerce President Josie Molloy joins us to talk about her first three years with the Chamber since moving back to the state from Wyoming.
A joy to have on the show and we know after you hear this podcast you’ll come away with a new found appreciation for what the Chamber is and all it has to offer, just like we did!
Checkout the Chamber’s New Website! – https://www.grantspasschamber.org/
Also, Lemonade Day for Young Entrepreneurs coming on August 20th – https://lemonadeday.org/grants-pass
From Wyoming Back to Oregon: 3 Years Working at The Chamber In Grants Pass!
What I Like Best About Grants Pass & Josephine County
How I Got Started Working in the Chamber of Commerce
The Right Type of Person That Would Enjoy This Kind of Work
Just What is The Chamber of Commerce?
- It’s All for the Businesses In Our Community
From Weekly Greeters Meetings to Community Events – There’s A Lot Going On Through The Chamber
Young Professionals Network
Starting August 20th: Our First Lemonade Day! For Kids 3rd Grade through 5th Grade
Where Did The Idea For Lemonade Day Come From?
Working Through COVID-19 Restrictions to Help Our Community
COVID-19: Switching Greeters Meetings Online Thought Shutdowns (Meetings Opened Back Up In Person In July of 2021)
August 2021: We’re Getting a New Website & a Video Channel! 🙂
An Eye On Continued Progress for The Chamber & Our Community
We’re A Friendly Staff: Stop By the Chamber and Feel Free to Ask Questions!
Transcription
Josie: Even younger entrepreneurs, we’re trying to reach out to them with our Lemonade Day, which is brand new.
This is the first year we have ever done it and it’s for children grade 3rd through 5th, which is going to be coming to Grants Pass on August 20, from 3pm to 6pm. And we actually help them create a business plan, create their product, create their stand, find investors, and then actually sell the lemonade and make a profit.
Intro: There’s a place in Southern Oregon, filled with gorgeous natural beauty, friendly yet independent people and a mild, comfortable climate.
That place is called Grants Pass.
These are the stories of the people that live and work Josephine County. These are the movers and shakers that make this place of the best.
This is Grants Pass VIP.
Brian: Josie Molloy has served as the Chamber President and CEO since August of 2018. Originally from Crane, Oregon, on the southeastern side of the state, Josie grew up on a cattle ranch.
She spent over 10 years in Laramie, Wyoming working for a Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Corporation.
Since moving to Grants Pass, she’s helped develop a lot of new programs, including a Young Professionals Network Group and Lemonade Day.
The chamber is going strong with over 600 members and continues to advocate for the business community as well as improving our community as a whole.
Josie Molloy, welcome to Grants Pass VIP.
Josie: Thanks for having me.
Brian: This is a lot of fun because we’ve got the meet each other over at the Chamber of Commerce. And so this is our first chance that we’ve been able to have you on the show, besides what we heard from your bio, let everyone know a little bit more about you and where they know you from.
Josie: Yeah, so lots of people probably know me through the Chamber of Commerce.
Like it said in my bio, I’ve been here since August of 2018. So I’m almost on my third year anniversary, it’s gone by very fast.
I’m also expecting my second child, so we’ve really grown our family since we moved here.
I’m originally from Oregon. So this was really moving back to my home state. But my husband Ciaran is from Cheyenne, Wyoming, so it was a big change for him.
We’ve really embraced Grants Pass and everyone has been so friendly. And it’s just really fun working in the chamber world because I get to meet so many people, so it’s been a great ride so far.
Brian: So why Grants Pass was it the position opening up, what brought you specifically here?
Josie: We kind of knew that we wanted to move to Oregon and I was just looking at different positions. I didn’t even know if I wanted to continue in the chamber world and this job popped up and I decided I would apply for it.
I got the job. I had never been to Grants Pass except for my interview but I loved it.
And actually, to be honest, my husband had never been here. I just told him what an amazing place it was and it was a great opportunity. So he took the chance and here we are three years later.
Brian: What do you like best about Grants Pass as a town and Josephine County as an overall area?
Josie: I really like that everyone is so friendly.
If you’ve ever been to Wyoming, it’s the same thing. People wave, they say hi, even if they don’t know you. But also the mountains, we love anything outdoor. So just being able to hike and fish and camp.
The weather is amazing. It does get a little hot in the summer for us. But you know, there’s hardly any snow, the weather never gets very cold, so it’s just an amazing place.
And the people are just really great. I think it’s really the people.
Brian: What led you into chamber work to begin with?
Josie: It was kind of just by chance.
So I actually got my degree in agricultural communications. I always thought I would be doing something promoting agriculture. But after college, I didn’t know what I was going to do.
I decided I was going to stay the summer in Laramie, Wyoming and a job at the chamber opened up. I took it. I started out as a part-time office receptionist. Then I worked my way up to Vice President. And then I was interim president CEO there. And then I just continued, I just really loved the chamber world.
Brian: Oh, that’s fabulous. That’s really cool.
Your background, it’s very similar to my own. I grew up working on the family cattle ranch.
Josie: Oh, nice!
Brian: My first major in college was agricultural communications. I never finished it, but that was my first major in college. So it’s really interesting how these things collide.
Would you recommend this line of work to other people, what type of person would be good at doing what you do?
Josie: You really have to be able to engage with any type of person. It’s a very fun and rewarding industry. But you have to be up for new challenges too.
We are a nonprofit, sometimes money’s tight and you have to do any type of position.
But the people that you get to meet, their stories, learn about businesses, get a tour of businesses, learn about their challenges and problems, and know that you’re making an impact, even though it might be behind the scenes.
But you know, we get to see a lot of successes and accomplishments. And it’s just fun, but you have to be ready, you know, each day is different.
You have to be able to have great customer service, and be willing to engage with people. So it takes a person that wants to, you know, meet new people.
Brian: That’s really interesting. And it’s funny because I joined the local chamber just earlier this year, it’s been a learning experience for me. I’ve seen chamber from other directions, I was involved in local government work at one time and so I had been to some chamber meetings there.
When I lived back in California, I tried to give other people an impression of what these chamber meetings are like and what I get out of them, and so forth.
So I’ve got a lot of people asking back, What is Chamber, you know, I’ve heard of Chamber of Commerce before, I don’t really know what it is?
I get that more often than not.
Can you explain to just a person off the street, what is Chamber of Commerce?
Josie: Yes. So of course, I get that question a lot, too.
We get lots of the misconceptions that we’re a city or a government organization, but we’re actually a private nonprofit organization that is privately funded through membership.
And we are bipartisan, but we really work to advocate for businesses. We represent the business community at different meetings, we advocate for them on a city, county and state level.
We really just try to push for a stronger economy, while also marketing our local businesses. So we’re involved in a lot of different areas, but it’s all for the business community.
Brian: Okay, got it.
What is the most popular element of Chamber, what is the thing that most of the people would know it by are most of the people would are involved in?
Josie: That’s hard because I see all the different areas you can be involved in.
Of course, for the Grants Pass Chamber, our greeters or business networking event is very popular. We have about 75 to 80 people every week. So we are known for networking.
We’re also known for concerts in the park, of course, you know, are different events like wine stroll and tap walk. So those are probably more of the things people out in the community notice for.
But then also, we run the visitor center at the north side of town next to the large caveman. Some people also know us because they’ve come into our office for Visitor Information.
And also, we’re just a general place to ask questions. We get tons of questions through the community, people looking to move here, visitors are really a go-to resource for any type of question you may have about our community.
Brian: That’s really interesting. I mean, I don’t ever think of it by all those terms so that’s really cool to get the full picture.
What are you most excited about today in terms of what the Chamber of Commerce is doing and what you guys are working on?
Josie: I think the most exciting thing for me, is chambers continue to adapt. So we actually started in 1924, which is crazy to think most chambers did in the 20s or 30s.
And through the different decades, we’ve continued to adapt.
Right now we’re really trying to work on getting younger entrepreneurs involved with the chamber. We’re trying to, you know, really crash that outlook, that it’s just for older people, it’s definitely not.
So what we’ve done is actually create a Young Professionals Network. It’s only about two years old, actually two and a half, almost three. It’s for young entrepreneurs just starting out in their careers.
We’re targeting 21 to 45 and we hold different networking opportunities, social events, professional development classes, and just really a group of people they can learn and grow.
Eventually, we want them to become our next leaders in the community. And hopefully, they’ll serve on different boards get involved, maybe even in the city council, serve on the chamber board, and just really get involved in our community.
Brian: Oh, fabulous. That’s exciting.
Josie: Yeah.
And then even younger entrepreneurs, we’re trying to reach out to them too, with our Lemonade Day, which is brand new, this is the first year we have ever done it. And it’s for children’s grades 3rd through 5th.
We’re actually helping them create their own lemonade stand, which is going to be coming to Grants Pass on August 20, from 3 pm to 6 pm. And we actually help them create a business plan, create their product, create their stand, find investors, and then actually sell the lemonade and make a profit.
And then with that profit we’re encouraging them, of course, to pay back their investors, spend some, save some and maybe even donate some to a nonprofit.
So we’re really trying to get them to think about, you know, the different things they could do with their life, and one of them is to become a young entrepreneur.
Brian: Excellent. That’s really cool.
And where did that idea come from?
Were there other chambers putting on similar things or other groups whose brainchild is Lemonade Day?
Josie: Yeah, so it’s actually a national program. It started in Texas, and it’s continued to grow all over the US.
Sometimes chambers do it. I know McMinnville’s done it, Medford just did it last year.
So I did see other chambers doing it some in Wyoming.
And I thought, How cool is that? That definitely fits with our mission.
So we just adopted it to our community and we just hope to continue growing it. Because you know, it fits so well with the chamber mission.
Brian: Yeah, absolutely. That’s just really cool.
So speaking of last year and everything that’s been going on, for those of you listening to this, depending on when you’re listening to it, this is the end of July and 2021 that we’re recording this.
How has the last year and a half with COVID and everything else that has come about, how’s this affected your life and the chamber as a whole?
Josie: It definitely made us think outside the box and become very adaptive.
Some companies completely shut down and we took a different approach. We decided that our community needed us more than ever through COVID.
Sometimes we did have to shut our doors due to COVID restrictions. But even when people were home in March and April, when it seems so long ago, but we were all stuck in our homes, we actually transfer the phones to our cell phones.
So we continue to answer all those questions, help people find resources, find funding options.
Then once we open back up, we started handing out PPE, which was the mask, the free hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes. And we were really a central place for reliable information, usually immediate, and we worked directly with the governor’s office to fight for businesses.
Sometimes when some of the restrictions came down, it really didn’t make sense. We took a bit approach, we actually worked with the governor’s office to kind of help them understand how a business was looking at it, what was reasonable.
So we did make some changes through advocacy through that. But mostly it was just communicating with businesses, and helping them get through this era.
Commercial Break: Okay, let’s take a break from that conversation. I wanted to bring up a question for you, during these crazy times, do you feel like your business is indestructible?
Most people don’t and if not, the real question is why?
And what can you do to make it as indestructible as possible?
Well, that’s the basis of my new book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. Let me talk about what we discussed in chapter six, the sixth way, which is to OFFER ONGOING.
What does that mean?
Well, what it means is, don’t just have products that are one-time uses, find a way to offer some type of ongoing value to your clients, even if you can’t offer it yourself.
Even if you don’t specifically offer a service that goes on and on, find someone else who doesn’t team up with them, find a way to turn what you do into some form of subscription or membership. And get your stuff out there more often allow them a chance to get to know like and trust you via a product or service.
This is a way that you can completely take Amazon’s idea and twist it into something directly for your own Amazon Prime’s a major deal in the success behind amazon.com.
You can get it to work for you, even if you just work on a local level.
But I also have eight other ways to Amazon-Proof your business basically the idea of making it competition-proof to even someone as big as amazon.com.
So if you’d like to get your hands on a free copy of my book, go to AmazonProofBook.com. Sign up and you will get a free copy and get the chance to purchase a physical copy of it for a special price.
In addition to that, if you happen to be in the Josephine County area or nearby, and you’re looking to have a speaker come and discuss these types of issues with your organization, club, or group of friends, then I have a limited calendar that I may be able to fit you into.
Go check out BrianJPombo.com/Speaking and fill out the application. We’ll be sure and get back to you on that. And now let’s get back to our show.
Brian: It’s amazing, you were able to keep Greeters going by having it done electronically online. And everything, I mean, that was how I came in. While we were still doing that you just recently started having live meetings, which is really cool.
Josie: We were able to switch everything virtually. And I’ll have to give a big shout-out to LS Networks, they were actually the one who provided us the platform to do that. We used Aspen, which is very similar to zoom, but a little bit more secure.
So every committee we have every event we usually do, we held lots of webinars, all virtually so we could all stay connected, even though we couldn’t meet in person.
And thank you, you know, for attending those because we wouldn’t have been able to do it without the members and people that connected with us virtually?
Brian: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. No, it was great.
You do what you can, you know, whatever you can to survive. And that’s what matters most and it seems like you were able to keep things rolling along, which is fabulous.
Josie, if we were to talk again, a year from now, what would have had to have happened over the past 12 months for you to feel happy about your progress both personally and professionally?
Josie: Basically, as long as we’re continuing to move on, we have some exciting plans as the chamber, we always are looking for opportunities to grow. As long as we’re still there for the community, we’re growing and membership, we’re growing in our resources available to our members, I would be proud.
And actually, we’re getting a brand new website that’s coming out next month, and then we’re adding our own video channel, which will have to have you on and interview you.
We have some exciting things coming up.
So I just can’t see how I wouldn’t be happy. We have an amazing staff at the chamber that is very creative and has some great ideas and we’re just always looking to enhance our community.
Brian: That’s awesome.
And I definitely encourage everyone to take advantage of all the great value that the chamber offers businesses out there. I mean, it’s just always finding out more that was always there. But I didn’t notice, or I missed during a meeting or whatever. It’s really cool.
Are there any major obstacles standing in your way of getting where you want to be in a year?
Josie: I think it really comes down to funding.
Funding is hard because we are nonprofit, the more businesses we can get to join as a member, it helps us It helps the entire community. And we just hope that COVID doesn’t come back which can also hinder our plans as well.
I know that workforce for everyone is very difficult right now, you know, impacts us as well. So sometimes that slows growth but you know, that’s one thing we’re trying to focus on.
Another thing that we kind of didn’t mention that is always a hurdle is we have a government affairs committee that actually advocates for businesses.
So we are constantly in communication with our state legislators. And of course, things happening at the state level can kind of deter some of our progress as well.
There’s a lot of factors that can happen but we’re always there fighting for our members. So I guess funding.
So if you want to join the chamber, we’d love to have you as an investor in your community.
Brian: Oh, that’s great. And I really appreciate the time that you spent with us here, you’ve given us a lot to go off of.
Is there anything that I did not ask you that you’d like to answer?
Josie: Oh, I would just encourage you, you know, listeners and anyone who’s interested. If you want to learn more about the chamber and get involved in your community, we’re very open. You can always stop by our visitor center, just walk in the door and usually, you can meet with me or one of my staff.
You can attend one of our weekly Greeters Meetings, everyone’s very friendly.
Just come check it out, see what’s happening in the chamber.
It’s an exciting time for everyone and we would love to have more people involved and check out our communion calendar. We post events for free on there and get a lot of traffic If you ever have an event happening, make sure it’s on there.
If you’re looking for something to do, I strongly encourage you to check it out at GrantsPassChamber.org.
And also follow us on Facebook and Instagram. We post different things happening in the community on there, too.
Brian: That’s great.
You are a great representative for the chamber because you’re able to hit the points, all those necessary and you’re able to direct people where they need to go right off the bat without me even asking. So that’s fabulous.
Josie Malloy, thanks so much for being on Grants Pass VIP.
Josie: Thank you so much for having me.
Brian’s Closing Thoughts: This is really a lot of fun sitting down and talking with Josie. She is one of the most consistent people I think I’ve ever met.
She is very even-tempered and has a very even personality, every time I meet her, she’s perfect for this type of position.
One of the things I wanted to bring up right off the bat, is if you’re a business owner, or you run an organization, you need somebody like Josie running things, that’s the face that’s out in front that’s working with people.
Like she mentioned, you have to work with a whole bunch of different types of people. And you have to kind of have a very even temperament.
She definitely has that she has the ability to bring up all the important matters when they matter and also be able to handle people with all their different foibles and personalities and everything else.
So kudos to her for doing a great job with the Chamber of Commerce.
It’s very interesting.
My background with the Chamber of Commerce, as I mentioned previously, I’d worked in government and had been to a few chamber meetings and wasn’t quite sure how to interact easily, especially when you don’t have something specific that you’re trying to sell. You’re just trying to show your face, let people know that you’re there.
And so the different types of greeters events and things that I’ve been to in the past, I wasn’t quite sure how to work them.
So in my mind, honestly, Chamber of Commerce always brought up awkward feelings.
Because I’m a naturally outgoing person, but not necessarily a natural people person.
Chamber of Commerce was always interesting to me.
And then my wife, on the other hand, who is very much an outgoing people person, she did really well with the Chamber of Commerce, she did so well that she ended up working at a chamber of commerce back in California, and had worked for I think, probably a few years for one of the Chamber of Commerce.
She had a very different perspective from the inside.
I had forgotten completely. I didn’t even bring that up when I was chatting with Josie. That’s an interesting background for me.
And the reason why I got back into it was that we were doing interviews for the Grants Pass VIP. We had talked with Tag Witherspoon over at Grants Pass Downs, who we’re still trying to nail down for an interview. And hopefully, you’ll get to hear him in the future discuss what’s going on over there.
He introduced me to Linda Bradley with the chamber and she was the one that encouraged me to come in and look a little closer at the Chamber of Commerce and see about getting involved because of Linda’s persistence is the reason why I am very proud member of the Grants Pass and Josephine County Chamber of Commerce today.
It’s really an interesting group to look into. See if it’s a good fit for you. See if being able to network and get your name out there and more ways is worth the relatively low fees that are due every year. It’s a cool opportunity.
Josie is a cool person to meet and there’s a lot of other cool people that I’ve gotten to meet and that you’ve already gotten to hear here on Grants Pass VIP and we’ll get to hear more in the future.
Outro: Join us again on the next Grants Pass VIP brought to you by the team BrianJPombo.com. Helping movers and shakers in Southern Oregon and beyond stand out. That’s B R I A N J P O M B O dot com.
If you or someone you know would like to be a guest or sponsor on Grants Pass VIP, go to GrantsPassVIP.com/Contact.
Guests who appear on the show not necessarily endorse the opinions of the hosts or sponsors. The music is FunShine, Kevin MacLeod. Our host is a Grants Pass resident and business strategist Brian Pombo. I’m Executive Producer Sean E. Douglas. Until next time, live Rogue and have fun.